Brandon Stickney - The Five People Youll Meet in Prison

THE FIVE
PEOPLE YOULL
MEET IN PRISON

A MEMOIR OF ADDICTION, MANIA & HOPE

BRANDON M. STICKNEY

Copyright: Brandon M. Stickney, 2020. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from
the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.

Cover & Interior design: Tracy Copes
Author Photo/Prison Page Illustrations: Patrick Stickney

978-1-61088-196-8HC
978-1-61088-197-5PB
978-1-61088-198-2Kindle
978-1-61088-199-9--Ebook

Published by Bancroft Press Books that Enlighten
410-358-0658
P.O. Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209
www.bancroftpress.com

Printed in the United States of America

For Bruce Bortz,
who helped me get back into The Show,
and for Mitch Albom, who opened the gates of Heaven.

AUTHORS NOTE

T his memoir is based on my personal experiences and recollections about life in four different New York State prisons over the span of nearly two years. Due to the materials sensitive nature, Ive changed most names. Ive also changed some subject descriptions, some dates, and some locations of some events. Most conversations are drawn from notes I made while in prison, while some are recreated from memory afterward.

All five men alluded to in the book title knew I was a journalist and writer. And all of them urged me to write a book with them in it. The five named characters are composites, but they are composites of real characters I lived with in prison. The five fine fellows who kept me from going crazy in prison appear here in all their ragged glory.

This book took nineteen months for me to research in prison, and nine months to write and edit after I was released. For reasons that will soon become obvious, it was a very hard book to write.

Brandon M. Stickney
Palm Beach, FL
May 2019

CONTENTS

I first laid eyes upon Brandon M. Stickney in the local bookstore on Main Street in Lockport, New York, sometime in the very early 1990s. He recognized me as the guy who wrote books about the Beatles, which was how all the locals knew meHey, arent you the guy? To which I answered, Yes.

A few days later, he showed up at our red brick Victorian manor with a copy of a book about John Lennon that I had penned with Lennons half-sister, Julia Baird. The young man was after an autograph. After opening the front double doors of our studio at 735 East Market Street, I said to him for some reason: You dont really want an autograph. You want a job. I then showed him into my first-floor office, and sat down behind my desk, but the job interview was no interview at all. He was hired, and I expected to see him early the next day for work on Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney, among other things.

After a week or two, I said, Look man, you might as well just move in. The house was huge, and my small family occupied only a few miserly rooms. I invited him to pick an upstairs bedroom, which he promptly did. After a while, a girlfriend of his showed up. She was nice but normal and didnt blend well with the Krishna conscious vibe going on in our artsy ashram home. Often, I could hear them making adolescent love, which I found vaguely amusing; two young kids going at it like rabbits on the second floor. Its funny the things you remember.

Brandon was an excellent worker and a very intelligent boy. I never had any expectation he was in any way adversely involved with alcohol. In fact, at some level, he seemed rather collegiate, clean cut, and hopelessly nave about the world. A good-natured, jovial fellow, he got along well with my family and was courteous and professional with the many guests from all walks of life who flowed in and out of that beautiful big house, including everyone from the famous to the tweedy publishing drones from Toronto and New York who would come to either tweak me on some project they had already paid for or just make sure it was progressing along the lines preferred by their literary masters in midtown Manhattan.

Young Stickney was my right-hand man, a gleeful Gabby Hayes to my Roy Rogers. He was a damn fine employee, a good and trusted friend, and professional colleague. I took him to Europe with me on a publishing tour partly because I needed him, but more because I pitied himhe hadnt really been anywhere outside the confines of the narrow-minded Western New York arena.

Together we visited classy Krishna temples in London and brothels in Belgium, and stayed in the cheapest hotels I could findI was very money conscious (then as now) because Ive often seen people from poor families who go astray when they suddenly strike it rich. Anyway, we buttoned up whatever it was I was after in Europe for, and summarily returned home. I was happy Brandon had a chance to see the world, where he always acquitted himself admirably in the discharge of his duties.

I remember going down to Florida with him in my tricked-out camper van with an automatic bed, fridge, and a crazy cool stereo system on which we played Bob Dylans Everything is Broken all the way from Western New York to Key West, over and over again. Obviously, a terrific traveling song!

While we drove, I remember making love to my wife Vrnda on the bed, trying to be as quiet as possible, thinking I got away with it, only later to be nudged and winked at by Mr. Stickney about the bawdy marital adventure in the backseat of my rocking super van.

There is an incredible tale about my end times in Lockport and how everything I had built so carefully, so purposefully, so lovingly was destroyed by other peoples, avarice, jealousy, and petty mindedness. Others may hold differing opinions, but now at sixty-five the way I look at the history I myself created and successfully marketed reign supreme over anyone elses views on the world of what I did or who I am.

The fact is I dropped the ball when it came to my relationships with peopletrusting those I should have kept at arms-length and tossing aside those I shouldve embraced. Being wealthy is hard work and it doesnt come with an instruction manual. Anyway, I fucked up and lost, or rather, had it stolen away, piece by piece by personswho here shall remain nameless. But, as they say, you know well who you are!

As for Brandon, I never knew anything about his savage substance-abuse. I think I recall him doing a bit of cocaine back in the day and not thinking too much about it (even though it wasnt my cup of tea). I was a pretty much a live-and-let-live kind of enlightened dude. Fifteen years and about five lifetimes later, I heard that Brandon had become a hopeless addict and was in and out of jail on various offenses in that insular, close-minded, know-nothing town of Lockport. That black hole of blue-collar colloquialisms would be enough to make anybody a junkie. I blame Lockportdont blame him, say I!